Gravity
by Anonymississippi
Summary: Donna's worst day, a short prequel to Mindmending's Aftermath. When you're addicted to something, you gravitate towards it. And you'll do nearly anything to get there. M for themes.


**Short, angst-ridden prequel to Mindmending's Aftermath. I would heartily suggest you read that first, at least halfway through. Disclaimer: I do not take addiction or self-harm lightly whatsoever. I mean no offense to anyone; I only wish to show one character's desperation and hope I'm not belittling such a grave subject. Belongs to BBC, RTD, and Moffat.**

**Not exactly a song fic _per se_, but shamelessly adapted from Sara Bareilles' haunting _Gravity_. Go have a listen. You will cry.**

She remembers her worst day. It started with a question.

"Have you ever felt worthless?"

The water was frigid. She'd been sitting in a tub for three hours, staring at the blank tile backsplash, slapping the water's surface to mix the red with the foamy bubbles. The suds had dissipated; only swirly rubies remained.

"Like nothing you did ever mattered? Like someone could have loved you if you just could have… done something?"

"Nah, can't say that I have." He was completely clothed. At the opposite end of the bath, his brown pin stripes absorbed water and blood and whiskey. His mood was somber.

"Have you ever chugged alcohol to feel something? Not just to stop feeling?" she asked. Donna reached for the second bottle, resting on the toilet seat. The black label and brown liquid and clear glass were her allies. Her only other friend was inconstant. Yet, he was sitting across from her exposed, naked, mutilated form in the bath. For now. Until her mind cleared and he disappeared again.

"Alcohol doesn't really affect me. At least, not human alcohol."

"Are there other types?"

"Loads."

"Hmm."

She uncapped the top and swiftly chugged a mouthful or two, her soggy red hair just tipping the water's surface as she tilted her neck back further, brought the bottle once more to her mouth. She drank too fast. Leaning over the lip of the tub, she spat, dry heaved. She couldn't get it out of her system. Good, she wanted it there. To feel. To see. To be with him.

"You're everything," she said. Donna registered a vague throbbing, emanating from her metacarpals, wrist, forearm, skin, phalanges, watch-holder. A place on her body stung. She lifted the aching forearm from the clouded water, red dripping… drop, drip, dissolve… blood from a gash, from her own doing. To breathe again. To feel him. A sickly film covered her skin, coated the water's surface.

"Where are you?" she asked.

"I'm in your head."

"No…" she shifted, bringing weak, pruny, pale legs underneath her, crawling the length of the tub until she was nose to nose with the peculiar man and his spectral brown eyes. "Where are you now? Are you with me?"

"I'll never be with you again."

"Why not?" she asked. Her nostrils were blocked and her temples throbbed. She fumbled under the water, clasping the material on the legs of his suit, fisting her fingers against saturated pinstripes. "Was it something I did? Did I make you leave me?"

"I had to leave you. But I'm here now because you're my best friend."

"Am I really?" A hope. A plea. "My husband left me. So did my grandfather." She glanced to the other side of the bathroom, her black funeral dress carelessly stuffed in the corner near the door. She had ripped her lace sleeve, tearing at the cloying material. "Wouldn't surprise me if you did, too."

"What would we do without each other? Would you ever bang anyone else over the head? Would you tell him he's an idiot, even if he's the only true genius you'll ever encounter? Would you worship them, while at the same time putting them in their place? Donna, would you love them the way you love me?"

"How can I love someone I don't know?" she asked, bringing her hand to his face. She rotated her wrist, and crimson leaked from the cuts; blood speckled the man's jaw line, trickled from the forehead of unruly, pointy hair. "Why did you— why do you leave me?"

"I can't be with you. You'll die."

She bent closer and straddled him, tried to hold him. She couldn't feel anything but coursing, escaping blood; she needed to try harder, to focus more. To see beyond anything hallucinatory. His hands moved to the edge of the tub, supporting his weight and her own. She registered an indistinct change; she was supporting herself, on her knees, holding her bare body above nothing but brackish, cherry water. She tilted her head harshly, the alcohol and drugs loosening her muscles.

"I want you to take me away."

"I offered once. You turned me down."

"I was an idiot."

"I offered again. You came with me."

"I was brilliant."

"Oh, Donna Noble. You _are_." He reached a hand to her torso.

Could she feel him? Could she breathe his exhales, finger the threads of his hair, splash dirtied, painful droplets on his chin? He began to shimmer, to fade, to dissolve into the porcelain of the basin containing her mistakes.

"No!" she gasped, turning abruptly, reaching for the whiskey. She fell heavily on the side of the tub, the bottle sliding from her wet fingertips to the bathroom floor. She hefted her body, lightheaded and addled, fumbling for the neck. She grabbed the glassware and swallowed a choking mouthful, brown liquid burning as tears seeped like bad plumbing, dribbling over her cheeks. Her hair was wild, wavy from the once-scalding steam of the bath. Her skin had burned… She didn't notice.

"Come back," she gargled against the liquid. "Stay with me."

The man in pinstripes reappeared underneath her shaky form. His gaze was distraught, his suit sopping. He grabbed her shaking body. Was it warm from the alcohol? Cold from her nakedness and the prolonged bath? Was that another bottle, floating behind the convulsing mass that was her body? Pills… she had taken pills. How much had she had to drink? How deeply had she cut herself?

"I'm supposed to be with you!" she said. "I'm supposed to stay forever, as long as I'm living. Why would you leave me?" she gagged, splashing. "I wasn't worth it. I was nothing."

The exotic man stretched his index finger toward her navel, trailing a hand across her waistline. Was it a hand? Was this presence, both longed for yet despised trailing his digits across the expanse of skin laid bare in her depression; unprotected in her misery?

He maneuvered slowly, too slowly, from beneath the split of her legs so that he was kneeling, reverently, the jut of his chin at her brow as the wandering palm squashed itself into the giving muscles at the dip of her spine. Fingers climbed her backbone, raking the ginger hair, made redder from her own self-mutilation, strokes turning to tugs turning to caresses.

"What would you have me do?" he asked. "Bid me do what you will. I return, and you die."

"Rather to die in this… this embrace than live in your absence." She said. "You hold me without touching me… how?"

His limbs were ghosts. What he was could not be.

"I'll drown," she continued, attempting to submerge herself. The water sloshed, spilled onto the soaked mat on the floor. "I'll… drown, die without you. I won't feel you."

She pressed a hand against his chest. Hollow. No beats. If there were, would she burn?

"I never wanted anything more than you. More than this. What you could offer me. When I look at you, I see the stars. Everything I could've been if someone had just given me the chance. Why did… why am I so weak?" She was weak; in multiple ways, she thought.

"Would I be around anyone, _anyone_ who was weak? They would cower," the man said, hot mumbles on her ear lobe. "You are the opposite of weak. You don't know it, but you go to the cliff every time, to see me. You brave the end, to find me. Nothing will keep you down."

"Except for you. You break me. I was strong. I was— I was more than this," she said, casting a sweeping glance at her vulnerable form. "I'm so sad… so… down. I flew, once," she uttered, nostalgic for something she didn't remember. "Grounded. I'm far too grounded, stable. Instability. That's where life is. Where you find out who you really are, you know? I'm my best when I'm unstable. I'm unstable when I'm with you." She clutched the back of his neck. "By transitive property, I am my best when I'm with you. Make me better. Make me better than this."

She dropped her wounded arm from his side, trailing clotting matter in water.

"I took you because you were strong. You are strong."

"But did you ever love me? Love me for strength? Fragile strength... but strength no matter, yeah?

"Love is more than this."

"We had it once," she said. "Not 'love' _love_, but something better. I was… addicted. Giddy. High. Now, I live here, on my knees. In a bleedin' bathtub of all places." She looked at her arm. "Bleeding in more ways than one. This is where I'm to stay? Exiled from you? From the real you, anyway. You fade, but you're a drug. Why would anyone quit you? These, I could stop."

She indicated the rectangular pillbox, tiny closed doors silently clattering. An echo of every numb morning she felt when she ingested the 'helping' medication. Donna felt the bobbing bottle behind her, grabbed it, twisted the cap, swallowed again.

"But I can't stop you. You touched me for a little while." She intertwined their fingers; wanted to run. "I can't function without you." She hiccupped. "And I keep looking. Whether it's through this," she said, knocking his elbow with a half-drunk bottle of whiskey. "Or through those," she continued, indicating her sink ledge, the plastic white of her pillbox erect, at attention, like an eruption. "You're a black hole. I fall into you, because you're all over me, and I don't ever want to leave you. You're more than my enemy but less than my friend. I can't— I want you, but I don't know how. How we were."

She lunged at him. Her lips seized his dimple, her tongue ramming the hesitant barrier of his mouth. Donna felt him, wanted him… but this way? Was this right? She couldn't tell. The waters churned. Her body fell into his; those nonexistent arms worked imaginary magic on her breakable limbs. All over each other, but not bodily. She couldn't not fall into his self, into his mental gravity. Because he was beckoning her, pulling her, to an existence so much more than alarm clocks and temp jobs and telly and chips and forced conversations with worried family members. Pitying looks from medical personnel.

He orbited her. She was his sun, his center, what made her special. They were simply pulled to each other. She would never be brilliant without him. She wanted to be brilliant again.

He snaked a rough palm up her ribcage, brought her arm to his shoulder. He followed the curve of her arm's flesh, running his nose, dragging his stubbly jaw against the freckly skin of her bicep. He buried his face into her shoulder, pressing her, bending her, forcing her down. He swallowed her whimpering groans, finally completing his journey, subduing her tongue with his.

She cried, tearfully, vocally: "Will you ever let me go? Will I let you go?" She twisted, banging her legs against the side of the tub, the bottle clattering against its walls. "You're everything I think I need, but is that right? Are we right?"

He hovered over her, keeping her down.

"Say something!"

The man with dark eyes faded into the depths of the water.

Three days later, she wanted to see him again. She popped into the nearest off license and purchased two bottles of vodka. Returning to her flat, she stared blankly at the serrated knife lying on her kitchen counter. Pills and alcohol would be enough, she prayed. She nearly didn't resurface last time. But still…

Something always brings her back to him.

**Reviews appreciated.**


End file.
